


the last of a line

by starstrung



Category: Injection (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 16:34:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6573763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstrung/pseuds/starstrung
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The conversations they have in that room, with each other, set his mind spinning. The cosmos seem to revolve in the palms of their hands, and all of human achievement is theirs to evoke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the last of a line

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Gamble](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/endquestionmark) for letting me bother her with my bad ideas.

Maria’s the one to first suggest they go out for drinks, just like she’s the one to start the tradition of bringing a plate of sandwiches to their meetings. “There are no bad ideas here,” she says, and she opens the door wide. Sometimes Robin wonders if they would have even gotten to a second meeting if it had not been for her.

The conversations they have in that room, with each other, set his mind spinning. The cosmos seem to revolve in the palms of their hands, and all of human achievement is theirs to evoke. He knows he’s not the only one to feel this way. Once, Sim had turned to him after a particularly tangential discussion, his ever-enduring mask of good-naturedness broken open by something that Robin identified, a second too late, as wonder.

“You still haven’t gotten used to this, have you?” Vivek asks him. He rests his elbows on the bar and studies Robin from over his steepled fingers. His gloves are laid carefully at his side. Robin had watched Vivek take them off, pulling one finger off at a time, aware that Vivek knew he was staring.

“What gave it away?” he asks.

At the pool table, he can see the rest of their CCCU, Brigid smirking as she wipes the floor with Maria and Simeon, her hood not shadowing her face for once. Robin wonders how she will react when she realizes Sim is lining up the balls for her.

“Because you keep looking to them for help,” Vivek answers, and Robin snaps his attention back to him in dismay. He hadn’t even realized, but then, he’s seen the way Vivek picks up the slightest details, painting pictures of them that aren’t so much revealing as they are damning.

Maria had reacted with sincere enthusiasm when Vivek had done it to her. Robin thinks that, for her, it was a relief to be seen. Brigid, on the other hand, had reached across the table and wrapped her hand fully around Vivek’s windpipe. Most likely, she would have continued to choke him for an indefinite amount of time had Simeon not made her release Vivek’s throat in a movement too quick to follow.

It had certainly been one way to break the ice.

“Should I be?” Robin asks. “Looking for help, I mean.”

Vivek leans forward, his expression unreadable. Dressed in a suit that looks more expensive than the sum of Robin’s savings, he looks out of place here at this pub. Robin doesn’t know much about suits, but Vivek certainly cuts a striking figure in it. “That all depends on why you had this in your pocket.” And he produces a small black-handled  knife.

“Hey!” Robin says, patting his pockets in consternation. When had Vivek—? Robin tries to snatch it back from him without drawing any attention, but Vivek evades him, and continues to study the knife with interest. One slender finger runs over the crest carved into the hilt.

“Yes, I thought so,” Vivek says. “Your hands have the look of it. You worked this blade yourself, didn’t you?” He finds the knife’s pivot point, and balances it on his fingers. “It’s well made.”

Robin works his jaw and considers whether not to answer, briefly. If he’s learned anything about Vivek in the past few weeks, it’s that he doesn’t stop until all of his questions are answered, no matter how uncomfortable the subject. And it seems like, tonight, Vivek has decided that he is the uncomfortable subject.

“I did work it myself, yes. And for God’s sake, stop waving it around before someone sees you.” This time, Vivek lets him steal back his knife. Robin puts it away quickly, only to have Vivek take his hands.

“Now these,” Vivek says, tracing Robin’s fingertips with his own, “small lacerations, fibrous in origin, but only on your left hand.” Robin has never known Vivek to be a very tactile person, like Sim can be, but his hands are warm, and Robin doesn’t pull away. “Do you own a spinning wheel?”

He does. Vivek, satisfied, releases his hands. Robin resists the temptation to hide them in his pockets. “What’s your point here, Viv?”

“The others, myself included, discuss our work quite often. You are remarkably close-mouthed, considering,” Vivek says. Instead of steepling his fingers again, Vivek sits his elbow on the bar and props his head on his hand, the closest to a slouch that Robin has seen him affect. Robin abruptly realizes that Vivek has had a lot to drink, which means that _he’s_ had a lot to drink as well.

“Considering what?” he asks.

“Considering how badly you would like to fit in,” Vivek says. Alcohol makes his voice hang over the vowels longer than it would normally, but his eyes are no less sharp, observing. “It’s futile, you know. If we didn’t exist at the farthest reaches of the mundane, we would not be able to see the things that need to be seen.” Vivek spreads his hands, a lecturer’s poise. “A bird’s eye view is a valuable thing.”

Observing from a height, a spectator in an increasingly predictable world. Robin envies Vivek his distance, but Robin will never be able to hold himself apart. From other people, maybe. But the land always seems to want to claim him as its own.

“My line of work isn’t exactly something I can usually discuss with people and have them keep a straight face. Maybe that’s why I’m close-mouthed,” Robin says. “So that I can try to fit in. Here, at least.”

“If that’s the case, Robin,” Vivek says with a smile, not unkind, “you should really stop trying so hard.”

“Do you talk like this to all of your friends, Viv?” Robin asks, desperate.

Vivek looks taken aback for a moment — at Robin calling them friends, perhaps? — but he recovers swiftly. “From my limited experience,” Vivek makes a gesture that seems to encompass the other three at the pool table as well as Robin himself, “I would say yes.”

Robin is saved a reply by the sound of Brigid cracking her cue stick into Sim’s ribs.

-

Swiftly after that, they stand outside the pub, waiting for a cab.

“I need to get to a computer immediately,” Brigid says suddenly. Her voice lacks in almost any inflection, and yet Robin is still able to sense that she is agitated over something.

“I’m trying,” says Sim, who has been dutifully raising his arm every time one goes by. He still winces occasionally, for Brigid’s benefit rather than from actual pain, Robin thinks.

“No, not back home. That’s too far, I need one now,” Brigid says. She takes off in a brisk walk back towards the office and they have to hurry to catch up with her.

“Brigid? What’s going on?” Maria asks.

“Stop talking,” Brigid says. Her fingers are already twitching, as if she is composing code in her head.

“Do you need our help?” Maria asks, instead.

“I need his help,” Brigid says, stabbing a finger at Robin, who freezes. “The rest of you lot can come too, I suppose.”

“Have you figured out how to—?” he asks. It has only been a few days since he gave Brigid his notes, and since then, she has given no indication that she’s made any progress.

“No,” Brigid snaps, and begins to walk faster. Robin is getting out of breath just trying to keep up. “But I think I have an idea,” she adds, in quieter voice.

Vivek gives him a significant look as he passes him, which Robin decides he is far too drunk to try to interpret.

-

“Will someone please tell me what this is about?” Maria says once they are back at the office, unwinding scarves and shrugging out of coats.

Robin turns to Brigid, but she has already begun to type furiously on her computer.

“Well,” he says, feeling as if he has been caught out, and uncertain as to why. Rather than try to explain, he instead pulls out his notes and hands them to Maria. Vivek makes his customary look of distaste at the state of Robin’s handwriting, but both he and Simeon look over Maria’s shoulder to read.

“My God,” Sim says as he reads, his eyebrows climbing. “You’re actually doing this.”

“I had the easy go of it,” Robin says. His eyes are on Maria, who is still reading, her brow furrowed. He needs her to look up, and say that this can work, that he’s not in over his head, that he belongs here after all. He takes a breath. “Brigid’s the one who has to—”

“Robin, get over here,” Brigid calls him.

“Yes?” He hurries over and stares at her computer screen, finding it incomprehensible. “What do you need?” he asks, with no small amount of trepidation.

“Take this. It’s getting in my way.” She pulls her coat off quickly and shoves it at him, barely slowing in her typing.

“I thought you said you needed my help,” he says.

Brigid’s hands pause on her keyboard, and she turns to him slowly in her chair, her expression completely blank. _Fuck off_ , it says.

“Right.” He goes to hang her coat up, and that’s when Maria finally finishes reading.

The expression on her face when she turns to him is a revelation. Behind her, Viv gives him another significant look, which Robin resolutely ignores.

“Does it — do you think it could—?” he says, unsure of what exactly he wants to ask.

“Yes,” Maria says immediately, her eyes still bright with that yearning. “So let’s start from the beginning.”

Wasting no time, Maria goes to the blackboard and erases all of the writing with her forearm, careless of chalk dust. She begins to write, turning Robin’s conjurings into something actually halfway useful.

Brigid pauses in her typing to watch, and Robin suspects that she was waiting for Maria’s approval just as much as he was.

“I’ll go start a fresh pot of coffee,” sighs Vivek, as if put upon, but if he can’t sense the growing excitement in the room, the feeling that they are going to change everything, then Robin doesn’t think he’s as good at observing as he claims to be.

-

Robin wakes up feeling distinctly crushed, and much too warm, with what feels like Simeon’s entire body weight pinning him to the couch armrest. Robin squeezes out carefully. He is abruptly aware of how easily Simeon could probably murder him if he woke up right now.

It is hard to forget the time Sim showed up late for one of their meetings, and Vivek began to list all the different ways Simeon had just killed six people.

Freed, Robin looks around the room, which is in disarray. Empty mugs of coffee, and the remnants of take-out litter the table and floor, along with a mess of notes, most of them Robin’s, which got progressively less coherent as he became more frustrated, which is probably why Maria had Simeon make him sit down. He doesn’t remember much after that.

Her head pillowed on her arms, Maria sleeps at the table. Vivek is still sitting in his chair by the window, his absurdly long legs stretched out in front of him, hands clasped on his stomach. Robin is almost certain he is asleep, but he still has the feeling that he is being watched.

Meanwhile, Brigid is nowhere to be found. Her computer has yet to go into sleep mode, so he figures that she couldn’t have left very long ago. He takes everyone’s coats and drapes them over their shoulders in lieu of blankets. Brigid’s coat still hangs where he put it.

The outer stairs is the first place he checks. As he steps out, Robin immediately regrets not bringing his coat, realizing just how thin and worn his sweater is.

“Brigid?” he calls, breath puffing out in front of his face.

“Here,” Brigid answers, from above.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be up there,” he says, to which there is no reply.

Robin clambers gracelessly over the gate blocking the roof access stairs, swearing as his foot slides on the slick metal. He’s too old for this, he thinks, and is instantly horrified.

Now properly shivering, shoulders hunched and hands rubbing on his arms to stay warm, he goes up the stairs and finds Brigid leaning against the parapet of the roof, smoking.

As he comes up next to her, Brigid doesn’t look over at him, but to his surprise, she holds out her cigarette. He reaches for it, half expecting her to grind it out in his palm, or at least pull her hand away at the last moment, but she lets him take it.

“I’ve almost got it, you know. I have Viv’s reasoning, and Sim’s strategy, and Maria’s science, and all of that. I just don’t have your fucking ghost.”

“It would probably help if you didn’t think of it as a ghost,” he says, mildly.

“It would probably help if you weren’t shit at explaining.”

“It’s not easy, in my defense,” he says. “You had to—”

“If you tell me I had to have grown up with it, so help me Robin, I will toss you off this roof,” Brigid says calmly.

“Right,” he says, and chooses instead to tip his head up and blow out smoke.

“It’s mad, what we’re doing,” Brigid says.

“It is,” he agrees, lungs warmed by the cigarette. His fingers are still numb though, and he passes the cigarette back to her a little clumsily. Brigid doesn’t appear bothered by the cold, even though she has left her coat behind as well.

“I was hoping someone would say it before I did,” Brigid says, a little pointedly.

“Don’t look at me,” he says. He thinks about walking through the rain after leaving Brigid’s home, fighting the urge to run back and snatch his notes out of her hands. And then he remembers Maria’s approval and feels joyful all over again. It _is_ mad, what they’re doing, completely mad, and now that Brigid has said it out loud, he realizes that he doesn’t much care. “Are you going to stop?” he asks, even though he knows the answer.

She grimaces. “Piss off.”

He can’t help but grin, ducking his head.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Brigid says in disgust. She flicks the cigarette off the roof and turns to go down the stairs.

Ready to be out of the cold, he follows Brigid back to the office (she watches him climb back over the gate and laughs when he misjudges the distance and hurts himself coming down). They step inside to the warm smell of Viv’s coffee, and the sound of joints cracking loudly as Sim stretches awake.

It’s quite a lengthy stretch. Simeon slept in his undershirt, and his shoulders look distractingly large. Absurdly, Robin wonders if Sim timed it for when they walked through the door. Ignoring him, Brigid goes straight back to her computer with a mug of coffee.

Glancing around at them as if to say _Watch this_ , Viv sets a steaming mug of coffee down by Maria’s head.

Maria jerks awake almost immediately, her neck making a noise even more impressive than Sim’s. Robin winces in sympathy.

“I know what we need to do,” Maria announces, and then doesn’t explain further until after she’s finished her coffee.

-

Sim leans into the window of the passenger side of Brigid’s van, looking amused. “You kids remembered to pack lunch, yeah?”

In response, Brigid rolls up the windows. Laughing, Sim steps away, but not before he slips something into Robin’s pocket with a wink.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Robin asks her. It had been Maria’s suggestion, and it had been a good one, like all of her suggestions usually were. Maria has always been able to light the way forward in a room full of people who have never quite been used to working as a group.

Actually following Maria’s suggestions is a different thing altogether.

“Let’s just get this over with,” Brigid says, which isn’t as reassuring a response as Robin would have hoped.

They drive until the city disappears from around them, and then they drive until all he can see are wide fields and chalk grassland.

“There’s sandwiches. You can have one,” Brigid says, jerking her head to indicate the back of the van. “If you tell Sim, I’ll squeeze your eyeballs out with my thumbs and feed them to maggots.”

“Sweet of you,” Robin says dryly. He reaches back in his seat and passes a sandwich to her, taking one for himself as well. Brigid eats it quickly with one hand, her eyes never leaving the road.

“I thought at least Viv would have wanted to come,” he says, eating his own sandwich more slowly.

“He did. Maria threatened him,” Brigid says, almost fondly.

“She did? When did this happen?” Robin asks.

“You were standing with your head in the fridge avoiding eye contact,” Brigid says.

In his haste to answer, he swallows his mouthful of sandwich without chewing, and his eyes water. “That’s not what I was doing.”

“Sure.” Brigid smirks.

Robin subsides. He wonders what Maria could possibly have threatened Vivek with. He recalls Simeon looking vaguely relieved after Viv announced he couldn’t come after all, and then several things become astonishingly clear.

“Oh,” he groans, letting his head fall back against the window.

“Just figured it out, have you?” Brigid says. “Took you long enough.”

A copse of trees standing by the road catches his eye, and he sits up straight in his seat, happy to change the subject. “Pull over, would you?”

“Here?” Brigid says, in disbelief, but she brings the van to a stop by the side of the road.

“Hazel trees,” he explains, as they get out of the van. Robin goes to the nearest one and pulls out his knife to cut off a branch, but then stops himself. “You should do it.” He holds the knife out to Brigid.

“You’re joking,” she says. “You’ve made me drive us here, to the middle of nowhere, and—”

“Please, Brigid, I’m trying to show you something,” Robin says, finding himself pleading. He has no more idea of what they’re trying to accomplish here than Brigid does, but if they go back empty-handed, he will have failed Maria. “I want to help, all right?”

“Fine,” Brigid says, and takes his knife. She holds it much more firmly than Vivek held it, fingers tight around its handle. She uses it to cut off a long thin branch.

“It’s not too far from here, actually,” Robin says. “We can walk, if you’d like.”

Brigid shrugs. “Sure.” Robin tries to take the complete lack of emotion on her face as a good sign.

They continue through the field, following a fading path. In the distance is a small town. The landscape is as familiar as it is nondescript, and underneath it, Robin can feel the remnants of old ruins that have long since passed from this world into the next, the ley lines beneath his feet. The closer they get, the more clearly he can feel them

“So what’s the plan here?” Brigid says.

“Oh,” Robin says. “Well, I was thinking we could — well, you know — I could show you how to—”

“Great. I’m heading back to the van,” Brigid says, turning around.

“Hey, wait,” Robin tries to grab her by her shoulders, and then immediately rethinks his decision. “Look, I’m just nervous, all right.”

“Nervous,” Brigid says in disbelief. “Why the fuck are _you_ nervous?”

“‘A practical demonstration’,” Robin says, quoting Maria’s instructions to him. “I’ve never done that before. Taught anyone, I mean.” Brigid’s words catch up to him and he looks at her sharply. “Hold on. Are _you_ nervous?”

“Fuck off.” Brigid walks ahead of him, fast, and he hurries after her.

“Wait,” he says. He pulls the flask out of his pocket, and offers it to her.

Brigid snatches it out of his hands, and drinks from it. She makes an appreciative sound, and then freezes, her expression souring.

“This is Sim’s, isn’t it,” she says. “It’s way too good to be yours.”

“Hey,” Robin tries to protest, but after considering it, realizes that Brigid has a fair point. “Can I try—?”

“No,” Brigid says, cradling the flask to her chest. Robin hides a smile, and reminds himself to thank Simeon the next time he sees him.

“Oh, here we are,” Robin says, stopping in his tracks.

Brigid stares for a moment. “This is what you’ve brought me to see,” she says in a flat voice. “A rock.”

“It is a rock,” Robin agrees. It sits, bone-white and abrupt in the middle of the path. “The locals think it’s the petrified foot of the devil.”

“It doesn’t look like a foot,” Brigid says, considering it at an angle. “Are you sure it’s not a testicle?”

“The devil doesn’t have testicles,” Robin replies, just to see the look on Brigid’s face.

“You’re not serious,” Brigid says, after a very long moment. “Oh my god.” She sweeps the hazel branch at him.

Robin sidesteps it with a smile, relieved that Brigid seems to be more at ease now. It will make what he’s going to try to do much less difficult.

“Alright, I’m going to need you to take that stick,” Robin gestures, and Brigid holds it up as if she’s ready to strike him with it. He fumbles for his notebook and continues, quickly, “and draw this around the rock.” He draws out a simple design, and shows it to her. It’s one he knows by heart, even though he understands only a fraction of the symbols that ring it.

Brigid makes a face, and for a moment, Robin thinks she’s going to refuse to do it. But she snatches the notebook out of his hand, and begins to copy it out, stepping carefully around the stone as she traces her branch into the flattened dirt.

Afraid that he will say the wrong thing and ruin Brigid’s sudden eagerness to cooperate, Robin stands to the side and tries not to get in the way. He finds himself hoping, more than he had before, that this will work, that perhaps Brigid will understand something of him. It hits him, very acutely, that he is the last of the cunning-folk. If this is how he keeps that line alive, through Brigid, and Brigid’s works, then it will have to be enough.

“You’re not going to try to exorcise me, are you?” she asks as she draws, crouching close to the ground when she gets to a more complicated symbol. “Because I’ll tell you now, it’s not going to work.”

“Not quite,” he calls.

Brigid finishes drawing, and steps back, staring down dispassionately at the work she has done. “Close enough?” she asks, tossing back his notebook.

Robin catches it before it can slap him in the face. “More than close enough. You should be the one they send those Breaker’s Yard requests to, not me.”

“I don’t even know what that is,” Brigid says. “Simeon refuses to tell me what he knows about it.”

He hears the unspoken question in her voice, and pretends not to notice it. Simeon hasn’t even told _Robin_ what he knows about the Breaker’s Yard, and this intrigues him more than he would like. He wonders if he should have asked Sim to come along, but he doubts Sim would have stopped asking questions long enough to get anything done. It had to be Brigid.

“Now the words,” he says, and out of the corner of his eye sees Brigid look frustrated. He recites the words, slow and clear, and Brigid’s expression grows hooded as he continues.

Robin stops reciting, eyes lifting as he sees it, floating above the stone, wispy and faint. He turns to Brigid, and realizes with a sinking in his stomach, that she cannot see it.

“What is it? You’re looking at something,” Brigid says. The wind picks up, spiraling leaves around them.

“Oh,” she says, and Robin sees her realize, sees her senses expand to include the third of them gathered, sees her look up.

(“Coward,” it tells him.)

Just as quickly as it appeared it is gone, and the stone seems to lose some of its luster, its reflective whiteness. Robin lets out his breath and turns to Brigid, who manages to continue looking as if she is faintly bored.

Only faintly though, he notes. “Good?” he says, the most he dares to ask.

Brigid doesn’t answer, takes a drink from the flask, and then stops, making a face. “Bastard only filled it halfway,” she says, which he decides to take as a “yes”. “Explain what happened,” she tells him.

And he finds himself speaking quickly, fluidly. “The words I spoke were the same ones I have in my notes for you,” he tells her. “This,” Robin gestures to the pattern at their feet, “is what I asked you to build.”

“If this works,” and his heart pounds defiantly against the “if”, “you will have what you saw hovering over the stone, but instead of existing falsely in our physical world, it will exist for true in yours, with all the parts of us we have given to it as its disposal.”

Something in Brigid’s expression shifts, and it isn’t the fear and repulsion that he was dreading, but something more like understanding.

“Yeah, alright,” she says, and perhaps he could have hoped for a less lackluster reaction, but he knows enough to recognize its significance all the same.

“Back to the office, then?” he asks, lightly.

Brigid nods. “Viv is going to piss himself.”

Together, they head back to Brigid’s van, and Robin finds himself wondering what it will be like to live in the world Brigid builds for them.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on my [Tumblr](http://www.shadowsbroker.tumblr.com).


End file.
